Queen Elizabeth II is, in my opinion, one of the most unique women alive today. She is unconditionally revered and loved by millions, but her fame has nothing to do with her physical appearance, special talent, hard work, or anything else except who her father was. She didn’t choose this position, but she accepted it and has continually and selflessly risen to the occasion for 60 years. What would that be like? For your face to be familiar to the whole world, yet to have so few who truly know who you are? To live your whole filling an extremely important role, that being more or less all you know?
I took the occasion to read this book, which I highly recommend. A Year with the Queen by Robert Hardman. The content is great, but it also happens to be very well-designed! The publisher choose Baskerville for the body text, presumably because it has the nicest looking capital Q. And it uses Bell Gothic as a complement for headers and captions (exactly what I would have done).
I wanted the final portrait to feel a bit like a coin or a stamp come to life — to juxtapose her symbolic importance with the real person. I used colored pencil over a watercolor wash. I would have liked for the colored pencil to appear more smooth and accurate in the details… so I probably needed draw larger.
